Cemetery Junction looks like a risky roll of the dice for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, vaunted heroes of TV, radio, but not yet the silver screen. Their first film collaboration is this Seventies set, semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about three young men slouching towards adulthood in the fag end of Reading. Virtual unknowns take the lead roles.

If it’s touch and go, that’s down to an uneasy blend of the fondly personal and the anxiously formulaic. The heroes – eager white-collar hopeful Freddie (Christian Cooke), lippy Jagger-ish rebel Bruce (Tom Hughes, insolently charismatic) and their uncouth, lardy, allegedly lovable friend Snork (Jack Doolan) – must plan their escape from this joyless backwater and the spectres of wasted lives all around.

Not here the gimmick comedy of Gervais’s basically disastrous The Invention of Lying, though for a good half-hour it shares that film’s awkward, sitcommy tone. The “funny” scenes are crowbarred in, and the film’s horror of being sucked into a vortex of settled, suburban discontent is palpably at odds with its breezy vibe, safety net of a glam-rock soundtrack, and determination to flaunt itself as a good time.

Then it picks up: a ghastly annual ball for Freddie’s life assurance employers is the cue. A measly retirement gift of a cut-glass fruit bowl adorns this sequence, achieving the bitter pathos of The Office and Extras at something like their best. Ralph Fiennes, looking and sounding more like Leonard Rossiter by the day, does a sharp sketch in callous entitlement as the boss from hell, and Emily Watson lends her sad wisdom to the role of his wife, an unappreciated person who wants her daughter (sweet, bright Felicity Jones) to fare better.

Barring the least plausible nightclub in memory, it feels like we’re in safer hands from here on, and the film’s spreading warmth is its salvation. Where the story’s headed isn’t towards brave new horizons so much as tried-and-tested old ones – we’ve been there with Tim and Dawn from The Office, done that, got the postcard. Gervais and Merchant may offer less ambition or novelty than meet the eye, but being cosily shepherded to their feel-good destination never feels like drudgery.